Training service dogs for veterans shouldn’t be dangerous...
These four stories romp their way from Marcia's reunion with Buddy, her first trainee, to the uncovering of a thirty-year-old skeleton in her adopted town of Mayfair.
Meet Marcia Banks…
“I’m a normal person. Well, I do have an unusual first name, pronounced Mar-see-a, not Marsha. And a not very normal vocation—I train service dogs for veterans with PTSD.
“But otherwise I’m normal… Oh, and I have a tendency to get sucked into other people’s messes, which has led to my quite unusual avocation—amateur sleuth.
“Romp along with me and my four-legged best friend, Buddy through our first three big adventures, plus a bittersweet Christmas tale!”
In To Kill A Labrador (no dogs die!), Marcia is reunited with her first trainee, a Black Labrador/Rottie mix named Buddy. When his former Marine owner is accused of murdering his wife, Marcia is called in to dog-sit. Outraged that his small town is assuming him guilty until proven innocent, she tries to uncover the real killer. Even after the hunky local sheriff politely tells her to butt out, Marcia keeps poking around…until the killer finally pokes back.
In Arsenic and Young Lacy, Marcia deals with a challenging client, a neurotic former Army nurse who is being stalked. When Marcia receives a bizarre warning to stay away from her client and even sweet Lacy is caught up in the stalker’s malicious orbit, Marcia is torn. The young woman needs her service dog, and Marcia needs the training fee to bolster her perpetually tight finances, but how can she put her dogs at risk? Not to mention herself…
In The Call of The Woof, Marcia’s former client, a motorcycle enthusiast and traumatic brain injury sufferer, is accused of robbery and murder. Marcia and Buddy set out to clear his name, fighting misconceptions about bikers and TBI along the way. Marcia’s boyfriend isn’t very happy, though, that she’s putting herself at risk…again…and taking him along on her wild ride.
In A Mayfair Christmas Carol, when Mayfair, Florida’s newly-minted Chamber of Commerce goes off the rails and decides to build an ice skating rink for a Christmas extravaganza, a decades-old skeleton is uncovered, and its secrets threaten more than the town’s Christmas plans. Marcia is determined to help her police detective boyfriend solve the mystery—whether he wants her help or not. Can she and Buddy keep the ghost of Christmas past from destroying what is left of Mayfair’s founding family?
(This is the first of several holiday novellas that are an integral part of the series. They focus more on the town where Marcia lives than on her veteran clients.)
